Reports from Senegal - Pt. 1

Prior to my own visit to Dakar and Saint Louis in Senegal, West Africa, I received several reports from my fiancee (who is studying in Dakar all semester) that she has been actively pursued by many local (and nonlocal alike) men. These men believe that she is as equally interested in them as they are in her, despite the fact that she does not intend to give them this impression. Some of these eager men have even asked her to marry them! It is true that she is an attractive woman and that there are many factors in how men and women become attracted to one another, but almost all of the other young American women in her program are having the same experience.

What is going on here? Are the men these women are encountering 'wearing their hearts on their sleeves?' Are they eager to get married so they can be one step closer to having a ticket to live in the United States? Is it the result of cultural differences regarding male and female relations?

Certainly, some if not all of these hypotheses are true, but what else could be cause of this phenomenon? Could there be a more specific reason for this?

I would speculate that another main factor for this flood of attraction toward young American women by the men in other countries like Senegal could be due to the cultural exports of the United States (movies, games, tv shows, internet sites, etc.). More specifically, the way in which women are represented in these examples of mass media. Though I need to double check on the scholarly materials on this subject, I have heard that the stereotypical American woman is thought to be promiscuous, interested in foreign men, easy to manipulate, and an object of beauty and grandeur. This limiting perception of American women is not only degrading, but potentially dangerous if taken too seriously.

I do not subscribe to the hypodermic needle theory - in other words, that each of the men my fiancee encountered saw an American movie with a stereotypical American woman portrayed within it and instantly then believed that all American women must be just like her. Rather, I do believe that the sheer amount of output of such cultural exports from the United States over time has had at least some negative effect to the rest of the world's perception of American women, making men such as those in Dakar feel a powerful attraction towards them. The consequence of this being a large number of marriage proposals and offers of courtship to American female students on a staggering scale, at the very least. Perhaps more serious are the numbers of instances of sexual harassment and rape on American women while they work and study in other countries due to this unfair, untrue, and insensitive notion that actual women from the United States, or anywhere in the world for that matter, are just like characters in our films.

Needless to say, this hyperattraction toward American women from men in other countries is a complex issue dependant on a host of variables, including culture, geography, access to technology, and others. However, I do feel that mass media and our own cultural exports do have at least a somewhat significant role to play in how women from the United States are treated while studying abroad.